


Freeze and Thaw

by ollie_33



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ollie_33/pseuds/ollie_33
Summary: Late 1870s America, Phil Lester is a young schoolteacher who moves onto the family farm of hardworking homesteader Dan Howell. From the moment they meet, their animosity towards each other starts to bloom. Yet, as seasons change, is it possible that their hearts could as well?





	Freeze and Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, it's finally finished!!!
> 
> I can't go another second without first thanking my INCREDIBLE beta and artist. 
> 
> First of all to Julia (@couragetoexist) who was my incredible beta. Julia is a freaking treasure and has been so flexible has given me so much inspiration and help and I'm so freaking grateful. Thank you so so so much
> 
> Secondly to to Fi (@psychicmoth) who did the absolutely stunning art for this fic. seriously. Look at it. It's the most beautiful thing!! But also she was just a dream to work with thank you thank you thank you thank you
> 
> Hope you enjoy!!

If Phil’s philosophy on life was correct, his entire life had been leading up to the point where he was now. That meant that there was no way that what he was doing was wrong. But, that philosophy didn't prevent him from feeling absolutely terrified of what he was doing; teaching at a new school miles away from his home, staying with complete strangers, being away from his family for the first time in his life.

Phil knew he had to leave home. He had to cut his ties, get away from the comfort of his childhood home and his mother's cooking. He didn't want to be that kind of man all his life, living off of his parents and never making anything of his life. He was already on his way there, being 22 and an unmarried schoolteacher. His brother had been married at 19, so he knew his parents were starting to resign themselves into thinking that he would never get married. Phil wouldn't object to marriage, domestic life appealed to him, but he had never found a girl who had suited him. No matter how pretty, how kind, how talented, or how supportive, nobody ever caught his eye. He had gone out with Mary Olsen a few times, but she had gravitated to someone else when it became apparent that she was more interested in Phil than he was in her. Phil felt bad like he had let her down. She was a kind girl, but every time she went to take his hand Phil would want to yank his own away. 

The closer Phil Lester drew to the homestead where he would be staying, the more nervous he became. He knew very little of what to expect. An ad had been put out in the local paper for someone who was willing to pay a little money and offer some work in order to stay on their homestead. Phil had found the location of the small farm to be close to the schoolhouse he would be teaching at, far closer than his home thirty miles away. So, he had sent out a letter asking if the position had been filled yet, and just to Phil’s luck, it hadn’t. Besides that, he had had very little correspondence with the woman that lived there.

Phil and his brother rode side by side in silence, Phil’s scant possessions at their feet.   
There was no reason for Phil to be nervous. He didn’t have anything to hide, and these people knew he was coming. Even if they were the least welcoming people he ever met in his entire life, he would be fine. He just had to use this place as somewhere to sleep and eat. If they didn’t like him, that was fine. They had made an agreement to house him during the school year for the whole year unless he repeatedly violated anything they told him. He was sure that them simply not liking him wouldn’t constitute that, would it? Surely not. He was going to be okay, no matter what, but, it was Phil’s first time away from home for more than a few nights. He was 22 and knew it was high time he left the nest, but despite all this, he could not control his nerves.

 

It was slightly warmer inside than it was out. It was a particularly chilly autumn and Phil hoped that the cold weather wouldn’t extend into this winter. The schoolhouse was still a good mile from the house and he would be making that trip on quite a few winter mornings this year. He had a coat and things for winter tucked away, but he wasn’t sure they would be enough if the weather ever decided to turn particularly wicked on them. 

The woman, her name was Marie, took Phil to his room where he would be staying, leading him up a set of creaking stairs and down a short hall. The house was small, especially when he considered the number of girls he had seen downstairs, but his own family was large too and they had lived places smaller.

 

Phil set down his things next to the small bed that the woman informed him that this was where he would be sleeping. It wasn’t a room of its own, but it was a sectioned off piece from a larger room with thin curtains hung up. They were worn and spotty and easy to see through but Phil appreciated the gesture nonetheless. 

“My son Dan’s room,” she said in a voice that was supposed to sound cheery but had been infected with doubt. She seemed just as nervous as Phil was. 

“He’s my only son, so..” she trailed off. “The girls and I sleep down the hall. We’ll be there. Dan...he’s a good boy,” she said.

“Where is Dan at now?” Phil asked, looking around the empty room. He hadn't met him when he came in, the room downstairs filled with daughters, but not a son in sight. 

It had been an offhand question from Phil, but she looked at him as if he had just asked the dumbest question she had ever heard in his entire life.

“He's out...working? I don't know where you were raised but there are fields to work here, boy,” she said. Phil saw a flash of the strict authoritarian he imagined she could be. It made nervousness rise in Phil’s chest, but in a way, it made him like her even more than before. A contrast, another side. People who only appeared to have one side were, in Phil’s experience, either simple or devious. 

“I'm sorry, ma'am,” Phil said, his tone now polite as he had been taught to be. “I didn't mean that he should be here,” he continued, giving her a small smile, “I just wasn't aware that you had a son old enough to,” Phil looked down at his hands now, slightly embarrassed. 

“Yes...Daniel is nineteen. He started working out there since he was…well for more than ten years now,” she said, wiping one hand absently on the apron that hung around her waist.

“He must be pretty tired then,” Phil said after a beat, his attempt at a joke hanging in the air for a few seconds before she gave him a generous laugh. After a moment, she shifted back to seriousness and shook her head

“ My husband passed on last winter, so dan takes care of our crops with some help from the neighbors. They’re all good people for lending us a hand. We do the best we can. Dan works even harder than his father did. But, if I'm being quite honest here, Philip. we still find ourselves behind every year. I'm hoping you can help us a bit this year. Were you raised farming?”

“No ma'am, my father owned a dry goods store,” he said. He saw a flash of something in the woman's eyes that didn't seem to bode well for him. He knew that she seemed like a kind woman, but he also knew it was far harder to win someone like her over if she deemed you too city. “But...but I'm a good worker ma'am, and a quick learner. I meant what I said in my letter; I want to help you folks if you agree to keep me here,” he said, trying to show his earnest intentions.

“I believe you, Philip, but you must understand. I hope you prove me tougher than you look. It takes a strong hand to work these fields. I can't promise Dan will be near pleased,” she said, giving him a wry smile. She stepped towards Phil, tucking a key into his hand. “For the barn. Take all the time you need unpacking up here, come down when you're ready,” she said, and then she ducked back out of the small room. Then, Phil was alone. 

 

Phil went down the stairs about twenty minutes later, after tucking his small trunk up at the end of his bed and laying his blanket on it. He was greeted by the sight of two of the girls setting the table, an older girl at the stove, and some of the younger ones studying verse in front of the fire. Phil stopped for a moment on the stairs, observing them. It was far from what his family looked like back home, with two boys alone, but he felt a twinge of homesickness. It was the concept of family, really, that they were all there together, working as one unit; that was what Phil missed.

He finished his descent down the stairs, walking towards the kitchen where one of the daughters was cooking, stirring a pan with white gravy. 

“Can I help with anything?” Phil asked, standing a few feet back from the table and the stove.

“You can take that cloth and get the biscuits out of the stove,” she said, and Phil revealed in her directness. There was no “no, please, you're our guest,” or any other halfhearted pleasantries, just a simple question and an honest answer. Phil liked that.

He picked up a cloth and reached into the stove, taking out the hot pan and setting it down. Everything smelled absolutely delicious, and it looked the same. Phil was about to compliment it when the door opened and a man walked in. Not a man? A boy? He was somewhere in between, not too stubbly yet but tall with the strong build of a farmer. It aged him past his years, which Phil knew to be 19, but it didn't age him badly. God knows he was still handsome, but he looked older than Phil. His outline looked nothing like Phil's, so maybe that was what it meant for him to be so city. He wasn’t much taller, but he looked taller, and Phil felt waifish in comparison to the other man. He was a very handsome man, that was obvious just by looking over his soft brown eyes, curly brown hair, and freckles from the sun. His face had a softness that contrasted his strong body.

As Dan walked further through the frame of the door, Phil turned his eyes away from him. As fast as Dan had emerged from outside, he quickly disappeared upstairs. Phil and the girls finished putting dinner onto the table while Phil asked the girls small questions He did his best to pack their names and how old they were into his brain, for it was better to remember now before it was too late to ask again. He counted them all now, 5 girls in total. The youngest said she was 6 years old and the oldest was 15. Phil started to feel more at home. It wasn’t unlike at home, eating together with his family. It felt warm, the room filled with voices that didn’t have to be his own. 

Dan came back down eventually dressed in clothes he hadn’t been wearing before. The two youngest girls flocked towards Dan, already deep in conversation with their older brother before Dan had even said a word. Phil smiled knowingly, catching eyes with Dan for a second, but his smile was not returned. Instead, he gave Phil somewhere between a rather blank expression and a sneer and then turned and walked towards the table. Maybe this was just Dan. Maybe Dan just didn’t act like his family, wasn’t talkative or emotional. Phil wouldn’t mind that, really, some people were just like that, but just a few moments later Dan turned to the table, pinching off a piece of cornbread and popping it into his mouth, his sister hitting him on the shoulder and chiding him, the two grinning at each other. 

That look was an indication of the dinner to come. When Phil tried to introduce himself to Dan before they sat down at the table, Dan didn’t extend his hand back, instead just raising his eyebrows. Throughout dinner, whenever someone asked a question of Phil, Dan would drop his eyes down to the table and seem to pretend like no one was talking at all. Phil was completely baffled, he didn’t think he had done anything to make Dan dislike him. Sure, Phil was coming into his space, and maybe Dan would be upset about that, but that could hardly be Phil’s fault. He had just been responding to the ad, and surely Dan had been consulted before the ad was put out so really that didn’t add up. At first, Phil was genuinely confused but as the dinner went on, Phil started to be bothered by it. It was rude, and as far as Phil could fathom completely unjustified. Dan would talk and joke with the rest of the family but seemed to completely ignore Phil’s existence every time he started to speak. Phil caught a look between Dan and his mother that he didn’t think he was supposed to see, name glaring down Dan for a moment, Dan just shaking his head in response. 

Phil made a real attempt to talk to Dan during dinner when the conversation had died down for a moment and Phil looked over the table at Dan.

“You know..I don’t start teaching for a few days. If there are things that I can help you with…” Phil trailed off, giving him a wry, but what he hoped was a genuine smile. 

Dan finally looked up at him, something Phil thought might be progress until Dan looked him up and down and frowned over at him, his frown turning into a sneer. 

“Honestly? You think you can help?” Dan scoffed, looking Phil over coldly.

“I could learn,” Phil said, his voice wavering slightly. 

“I don’t have the time for you to learn,” Dan said dismissively, taking a long drink from the tin cup in front of him. Dan set down the cup hard, the thump against the wooden table ringing in Phil’s ears as Dan scraped his chair back, standing up from the table. 

“I’m going to bed early,” Dan said, giving his family a small smile and pushing his chair back in. He turned away from the table without a glance at Phil, disappearing up the narrow stairs.

The rest of dinner was quiet. Phil tried not to think about Dan, tried not to let it get him down. He let Dan’s mother chatter for a bit about how she had done the cooking that night and trying to let himself forget that Dan would be waiting upstairs in the room that he now shared with Phil.

The next few days continued to set this same standard for interaction between Dan and Phil. Dan was brash and dismissive, and eventually, Phil started to get fed up with being shut down at every attempt at making conversation with the other man. When Dan shut him, down, Phil started to be rude back.

They stayed in the same room, but they barely ever spoke except for petty bickering. They would wake at the same time, getting dressed in silence on opposite sides of the room. They would eat at the same table, sharing in the same conversations, but they started to learn to talk around each other. Neither one of them would respond directly to what the other would say or ask the other questions. They would wait and then respond to the next person’s comment. They wouldn’t even look at each other, and if they did it was either fleeting and accidental or on purpose to convey disdain. 

Phil didn’t have the faintest idea as to why Dan didn’t like him. Dan had no reason not to, and they couldn’t really have developed impressions of each other when they had barely spoken at all. Phil made a few attempts to bridge the gap between them, but he too started to have his resentments towards Dan. A man can only be shut down so many times before he starts to give up. Phil tried not to care about it. The rest of Dan’s family was lovely to him, so why should it matter much what just one of them thought. He spent most of his hours with the girls or with Dan’s mother Marie anyway, cooking and washing and cleaning. It was just hard to forget how unwelcome Dan felt towards him when every time Dan was in his vicinity Phil could feel Dan’s cold eyes on him. 

 

Soon he would start teaching be at school for most of the day, and he just needed to hold out until then. The girls, Phil learned, wouldn’t be taught by him. Their homestead was in the middle of two towns, a schoolhouse for each in opposite directions, and the girls went to one school while Phil taught at the other. There had been some push a few years back to combine them into one school in the middle, but as long as the schools were built and there were teachers employed there it didn’t make much of a difference to either town. 

Phil wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that. On the one hand, he had thought that there would be at least a few children he knew going to the new school. He would have his foot in the door in terms of relationships with the students, especially since the girls were always kind to him and seemed to get on with him well. But yet, on the other hand, it separated his school and home life completely, and that had a certain appeal.

As the day he would first start teaching arrived, he got more and more nervous. He would find himself worrying about it in any idle moment he had. If he wasn’t thinking hard about something else, he was thinking about how he would soon face a classroom full of new children, not too much younger than he was in the grand scheme of things, and have to assert some kind of authority over them. That idea made Phil’s skin crawl. Phil liked teaching, to help people to understand things about the world, he had loved it since he was a small kid in a schoolhouse much like the one he would soon be teaching in, but he had never been good at making people see him as a figure of authority. This wasn’t his first class by far, he had taught since he was 17, but each new group made him just as nervous as the last. The problem was Phil found it hard to be strict, to be threatening, or to make them respect him.

He remembered all the terrifying things that he had been told when he was studying for his teaching exams. He had been told not to smile until Christmas, that he was a dictator, that he should punish students for forgetting to call him Sir, and numerous other bits of “advice” that shook him to his core. 

Yet, the first few days of teaching went quite well for Phil. They stretched by, every day with Phil a ball of nerves as he walked to school, but every day things went smoothly. Grammar lessons, arithmetic, spelling, they all passed the days. Phil had 10 students in total, 4 boys, and 5 girls. The oldest was a girl of 16 and the youngest a boy of 8, and they went about as quietly and respectfully as he could have hoped.

Over these few days as well, his relationship with Dan had begun to mend somehow. Dan would look at Phil, Phil would look at Dan. Dan would ask him to pass things at dinner, unlike when he would ask his sisters even if Phil was much closer. It was small things like that, they would acknowledge each other’s presence. Maybe it wasn’t friendship, but it was far from the animosity that they had both exhibited before. It was a resignation to the fact that they were both here, and there was nothing they could do about it so they might as well ease some of the tension. 

Phil really wasn’t sure where it had come from, but there was no way he would complain about it. It turned out, that when Dan wasn’t soured to your existence, he was much lovelier than Phil had given him credit for. 

One evening, Dan even asked Phil how his day teaching had been. Phil had answered that it had been fair, Phil said a few words about how he was proud of his students, how they were all bright and kind and Dan had smiled at him for the first time. It was a lovely smile, and Phil was astonished to discover that Dan had dimples.

Though, as time wore on it became apparent that school life would be more challenging than just writing on a blackboard and telling students what pages to turn to in their readers

There was a kid, an older boy who was a good kid but bless him wasn’t the sharpest, and he had yet again failed his lessons. He could hardly spell, didn’t seem to practice his readings, nothing stuck with the boy. Phil never liked using any corporal punishment. He hated it, in fact, it made him physically sick. But an empty threat held no weight. Phil had had to. Phil tried not to hit too hard, but a metal ruler always hurt. Phil had to keep reminding himself that this was his job. He wasn’t this boy’s friend, but it was hard to feel anything but awful when the boy started crying. 

When Phil came home, he felt more tired than he had in a very long time. Phil knew he should stay and help and eat dinner, but he feigned sickness and immediately went upstairs. 

Later that night, Dan came to check on him. It was sweet and strange, and new.

Phil was lying on his side, facing the wall. He heard Dan come in, Phil held his breath waiting for him to leave, but then he heard him come closer, Phil thought he must be standing right next to the bed now, and then Phil felt Dan's hand on his shoulder.

“Phil, are you ill?”

Phil rolled over slightly, Dans tanned and warm face appearing above him. Phil hesitated. Should he lie and say he was. It would be quite a bit easier to just pretend to have caught a cold.

“Kind of,” Phil said In a small voice.

Dan raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I️ had to punish a child today. He’s an older boy too but.. he didn’t know his lesson and he’s falling behind. I️ just don’t...I️ don’t control people well, I’m not good at...but I️ had to!” Phil said his words coming out all at once. He could feel himself start to shake as he relived it in his mind, waiting for Dan to speak back to him. Dan took a while before he answered, and when he did his words were frank and cold. 

“No you didn’t,” Dan said, his expression now blank.

“But..”

“No, you didn’t,” he repeated, more firmly this time, shaking his head and setting his eyebrows. 

Dan left suddenly, turning his back to Phil. From that day on, the ice returned to their relationship, the world matched his frosty turn, winter taking its grip on the world as everything turned to ice and snow.

There were some small tasks over the week that would force Dan and Phil to cooperate since there were lots of things and chores that had to be done around the house, it was inevitable that they would work with or around each other.

Phil would cross to the stables at the same time that Dan was walking to the woodshed, things like that. Being around each other, Phil could almost pretend that they didn’t dislike each other, but then as they passed Dan would give him a look like he was scum and Phil would remember what Dan thought of him. 

Besides that, Dan would barely acknowledge Phil’s presence. He didn’t speak to him, even when they were in the same room for hours on end. They would lay awake in silence as they both fell asleep. The sudden turn wasn’t something that Phil understood, but it quickly became part of his life again. Phil played over and over again their last conversation, trying to figure out what he did wrong, but weeks passed and he made no progress to rectify their relationship.

Phil didn’t understand. They had been doing alright, really. They had been alright. Not amiable or open or anything like that, but their unkind words and insults hadn’t felt personal for weeks. Maybe things were changing, Phil had thought. Maybe they would get through the rest of the school year and through the winter with them only rubbing shoulders instead of butting heads. But now, that was gone. 

============================

Dan and Phil shared a small room together, so it was in no way strange to walk into their bedroom and find Dan there, but what was strange was finding Dan sitting on his bed, his journal open in his lap. It was a small leather-bound journal that Phil jotted things down in every day. It wasn’t a novel, but it was personal and private and to see it in someone else’s hands sent Phil’s mind flying off the handle. His blood immediately started boiling. Without hesitation, he walked up to Dan and snatched the book out of his hands. 

“What do you think you’re doing?!” Phil said, shaking the small journal in his face. 

Phil expected Dan to fight back, to say something or have some explanation but he just went silent, looking up at Phil blankly, knowing he had been caught. Somehow, that only provoked Phil more. 

“What do you have to say for yourself, what do you think you’re doing?!” Phil asked, throwing the book so it landed next to Dan. 

“You’re reading my journal? Why? So you can try to find more reasons to hate me?” 

Dan shrugged. Phil was seething. 

“Are you serious? Why are you reading my journal? How long have you been sitting here for, how much did you read?!”

“None, I didn’t read any of it,” Dan said, looking down at his hands. 

“Don’t lie to me! Don’t lie to me, I saw you! I saw you reading it there’s no way to say you weren’t,” Phil said, shaking his head and looking down at Dan, his eyes hawk-like and accusatory. 

“I wasn’t reading it.”

“I saw you!”

“I wasn’t reading it. I can’t read,” Dan said matter-of-factly with a small shrug. Dan picked up the journal and stood up from the bed, pressing it into Phil’s hands and brushing past him and out of the room.

After Dan left the room, Phil sat down on his bed that Dan had just occupied, the journal in his hands as he flipped through the pages. Phil didn’t quite understand. Actually, he didn’t understand at all.   
Phil did consider the idea that maybe Dan couldn’t read. It wasn’t completely unheard of, or even uncommon. But, there was no reason in his mind why Dan shouldn’t be able to read. His sisters could read, there were a few books in their house. He had heard Dan reading the bible to his sister. Dan had gone to school, everything pointed to the conclusion that Dan should be able to read. Phil then entertained the idea that he could be lying to get out of telling Phil what he had read. He must not have left school very long ago, that seemed to be the only logical explanation for Dan saying he couldn’t read that was Dan was lying to him. But then what would Phil do with that? He couldn’t call Dan out for it right now, and even if he did, wouldn’t they just be more angry at each other. There was no way out. 

Phil got up from the bed, walking over to his small trunk and popping it open. He pulled a few books off of his small stack until he got to his readers. He contemplated them, and then picked up a level two reader and closed the trunk, walking over to Dan’s bed and setting it down on the quilt. He looked down at it and then left it there, walking out of the room. 

He went through the rest of this Sunday, venturing out into the cold and tending to some of the animals. After dinner they all sat together in front of the fire, Dan sharpening a small knife on a stone and Phil going through a speller. When he got back to their room later that night, the book was back on his bed.

“I thought you might want to…” Phil said, looking over at Dan sitting on his own bed, gently waving the book. 

“No,” Dan said curtly. 

“No? I mean, you might not think you need it but...I mean, I’m sure you can learn to read, Dan” he said gently. 

“No, I don’t need it, you’re right,” Dan said, again as curt as before. 

“Dan, you run a farm,” Phil said gently. He didn’t want to start a fight, what he wanted was either to help him if he couldn’t read and get him to admit that he had read his diary if he, more likely, could read. 

 

“Yeah, I do. And I’m doing fine!” Dan said, glaring over at Phil. “I’ve studied that reader, you know. I’ve studied all of them. I just...can’t read. I can do arithmetic, I can do what I need for the farm.” 

Phil raised his eyebrows “are you being serious? If you’re lying to me, you can just say so. I don’t get it?” 

Dan just shrugged. “I’m going to bed,” he said, turning away from Phil and pulling his shirt off over his head. 

Phil just didn’t understand. Phil watched him from the bed, Dan pulling his nightshirt over his muscular chest in the low light of the room.

“If you learned how to read, how can you not read?” Phil asked Dan looked up at him incredulously. Phil didn’t imagine he could have forgotten to read that quickly.

“I just can’t?!” Dan said, shaking his head and laying back on the bed. “Can we go to bed?”

“Dan, I can teach you to read, I’m a teacher,” he said, now pulling off his own clothes, grabbing his nightshirt from the trunk at the end of the bed. 

“Really? Could you? The other teacher couldn’t,” he said. 

Phil pulled the shirt over his head, the collar coming over his eyes and revealing a frustrated Dan looking over at him.

“Well, I’d like to try. I’d like to try,” Phil said. 

Dan scoffed, but then Phil put out the light and the two both lay back, pulling the blankets and quilts over themselves and then not saying another word before that. The moonlight came directly through their window, when Phil looked over he could see Dan, see his silhouette and the curl of his hair. It took Phil a while to fall asleep, he just kept thinking. Dan wasn’t stupid. Phil didn’t understand, not at all. He had been teaching since he was 17 years old, he had taught three different groups of schoolchildren. Some of them had had some trouble reading, but they had all improved as the time that Phil was teaching them went on. None of them, by the time that they left school, had not known how to read. Phil just didn’t understand what it would be like. He closed his eyes, reaching up one hand to rub his eyes as he thought. He made a decision, a decision that he would help Dan, if Dan let him.

================

But the thing was, Dan wouldn’t let them. He didn’t seem to let Phil near him with a book. Really, if anything, their relationship got worse. They weren’t fighting, there were no unkind words, but there was complete freezing silence. It was the worst at night, everyone in the house together, all around the fire. They wouldn’t talk to each other, only to the girls or to Dan’s mother. If they ever looked at each other or they ever had to do something together, it was clear in Dan’s eyes that he didn’t want to be around Phil.

The next time Dan said more than two words for him was one late evening, the winter sun already set.

“I need to take you to the schoolhouse tomorrow. There’ll be too much snow for you to get through,” Dan said. 

That was true. It had been snowing all weekend. Any tracks that Phil had made during the week before would have been covered up by the fresh snow. It was also deathly cold. Up the stairs and away from the fireplace it became so intensely cold. Phil knew he was right, so he just nodded and said: “alright, that’s fine.” He looked back down at the poetry book in his hands. 

That was it, that was all the conversation. They stayed in front of the fire, the three younger sisters, Minnie and Alice and Louise, playing with small wooden horses, carved by their father and painted by Dan. Grace was sitting in a chair next to Dan’s mother and sewing lace. Then, they all went to bed. Dan and Phil changed silently, quickly. They went directly to bed, pulling the quilts over themselves as soon as they could. Phil could feel goosebumps up and down his arms and legs, and he fell asleep before they went down.

==========  
Entering the schoolhouse together, Dan immediately went towards the woodstove. There was a small pile of wood stacked up near the stove and Dan brought the pieces into his arms and fed them into the stove, lighting a small bit of kindling and trying to get the fire to come to life. Phil stood back, watching him from behind, unsure of what to do. 

“We can’t go back now,” Dan said solemnly, looking over his shoulder at Phil. “The blizzard is only going to get worse, we can’t go back home,” he said. Phil nodded, watching Dan’s face for any sign of emotion. He just wanted to know what he was thinking. This whole trip had been so silent. Some of that was the cold, but he still felt such a stony distance in between him and Dan. He wished he knew why, but he knew that it was more likely that God himself would tell him than that Dan would open up to him. 

“We’ll have to bring the horses into the schoolhouse. I’m sorry, but they can’t handle that kind of wind on their own,” Dan said, straightening up from his position on the ground and stepping away from the now crackling stove. “We’ll have to move things around so they can fit. Are the desks bolted in?” 

Phil never really gave Dan credit for how amazing he was with his horses. Now, as Dan guided them into the tiny schoolhouse, Phil could stop and see how one he was with them. He could calm them down, make them feel safe with just his touch and his voice. Phil didn’t often see Dan as particularly gentle or caring. He was, in fact, tough and crass and judgemental. But this was a different side to him. Dan was now holding his hand gently over each of the horses' snouts, melting the ice that had frozen there so that the horses could breathe better. The grey horse stiffened as the windows of the schoolhouse rattled in the wind, but Dan soothed her, calming her down. Phil stood leaning with his back against the desk, watching the man work. Phil felt a bit useless, this was his turf. The schoolhouse was his territory, yet he felt like he could do absolutely nothing to help. It was unsettling that Dan was now dominating the one place that Phil called his own now.

Dan finished tying the horses up, now both of them calmly snorting and shaking their heads. The air in the room was still frigid, but it was absolutely nothing in comparison to the bitter wind that was roaring outside. Dan moved closer to the stove, leaning down and rubbing his hands to warm them. He looked over his shoulder towards Phil again, who hadn’t moved since the brought in the horses. 

“Don’t just stand there, it’s warmer over here,” he said, and for a second the words didn’t sound patronizing. For a moment, he thought he might see the flash of genuine caring in Dan’s eye, but soon it was gone as Dan turned his back again. Phil could only see a sliver of his face, the stove reflecting a bit of light off of it. It was dark in the building, very dark. The sun was blocked by so much thick snow you could barely tell that it was morning. Phil made his way towards Dan, weaving through the newly-moved seats. 

Phil leaned down. This wasn’t the closest he had ever been to Dan. Just half hour ago he had been closer to Dan when they were sitting in the cutter seats. But, it felt different now. There wasn’t a hard blanket between the two. It almost felt intimate until Dan moved away from him a bit. Phil tried to convince himself that it was just to make room for the both of them to kneel there, but Phil knew that probably wasn't so. Dan didn’t care about him, and his next sentence confirmed that to Phil. 

“My mother would kill me if I let you freeze to death out here,” Dan said, and no matter how Dan meant to say it, Phil felt something cold was over him, and it wasn’t from the blizzard outside. 

“Yes, I do think your mother would miss having someone around the house that makes things easier for her,” Phil said back. 

Dan’s hands stilled where he was rubbing them in front of the fire and he turned his head to shoot daggers at Phil

“Just because I say something doesn’t mean that I’m saying it to personally damage you, Phil. I’m not thinking about hurting your feelings all the time. Frankly, I’m not thinking of you at all. My mother would kill me, do you want to try to deny that?” he said. 

“So your mother is the only reason you’re not letting my freeze to death,” Phil said.

“I never said that,” Dan said. He leaned forward and for a second Phil tensed, thinking the other was reaching to try to hurt him. But Dan just grabbed another piece of wood from beside the stove and tossed it inside. 

“No. You didn’t say that. But you meant it,” Phil said, breaking the silence as he watched the log settle on the fire. Neither of them was shouting, neither of them had much emotion in their voice at all, yet their words seemed deathly serious. 

“You really think that I’m such a horrible person that I would let you freeze to death, Lester? Really? Just because I don’t like you doesn’t mean I’m a murderer,” Dan said, taking his hands away from the fire finally and reaching up to his collar to unbutton his coat.

“How am I to know?”

“What?”

“How am I to know?” Phil repeated, eyes serious and trained on Dan.

“That I’m not a murderer? Jesus God Phil, I’m not a murderer.”

“You haven’t shown me any fucking scrap of humanity, Dan. So yea, how do I know?”

Phil didn’t even have time to register Dan leaning in to kiss him, he hadn’t had time to put his hands up to block him. And Phil wasn’t even sure that he would have. Because now he was kissing Dan and he wasn’t doing anything. In fact, he was kissing him back.

Then suddenly, Dan was pulling away. 

“Haven’t shown you any humanity. Fuck you.” Dan said coldly, taking his hands off of Phil. 

Phil couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He didn’t even know what was going on in his head but then he was grabbing Dan and bringing his lips back to his own and God it felt good. It felt like nothing he had ever experienced before. Suddenly, Dan had him by the front of his coat and was pulling him upward into a standing position. They turned, pushing Phil back against the wall of the schoolhouse. Dan’s breath was hot against the cold skin of Phil’s face, and Phil almost gasped as he felt Dan’s cold hand nudge itself beneath his coat.

Violent was the wrong word entirely, but there was nothing delicate about the way that they were handling each other. Phil’s back was pressed firmly into the wood wall, Phil’s hand gripping tightly in Dan’s hair as the other moved against each other, their kisses hot and firm and careless.

Something had woken up in Phil. He wanted Dan more than anything. To be close to him, to be his. And Dan, solid and warm and soft took him, and for a few blessed hours Phil forgot everything, the world, the cold words spoken between Dan and Phil for weeks, they all faded away in Dan’s embrace

 

Eventually, the snow started to stop. By the afternoon you could see through more than a few inches outside, and Dan and Phil started to entertain the idea of going back to the house through the storm. Dan went out to the cutter and got their blankets, tucking them in near the bottom of the stove so they could warm. 

The way back was quiet, quick and silent. They went slowly, stopping halfway through the way to defrost the noses of the two horses. They didn’t talk, not speaking. Phil started to worry, Dan wasn’t looking at him, just forward out into the storm. He was worried that this had all made things worse. Whatever had changed for Phil, he was now worried that that hadn’t changed for Dan. That they had fucked, but still Dan didn’t see Phil as a person. Phil couldn’t stop thinking about that, and it was a more chilling prospect than the cold. There were blankets were tucked between them, Phil couldn’t feel Dan next to him, but then a few minutes before they reached the house Dan pushed his hand to the blankets, taking Phil’s gloved hand in his. 

 

============

After they got back, the night was normal. When they returned, the girls threw their arms around Dan. Phil was surprised by the fact that Minnie hugged her small arms around her knees, he looked down at her and put his hand on her shoulder, looking over at Dan and giving him a small smile. Of course, they had all assumed what was going on and that they had stayed at the schoolhouse, but in a storm like that, it was hard to know. They were relieved that they hadn’t gotten lost on their way there or had gotten stuck in the snow.

The night was normal, the girls studying the bible. Dan recited a verse. Phil followed along with them. Dan and Phil went to bed, up the stairs, and into the small room. They got dressed and got into bed as quickly as the night before, but they both lay awake silently. 

Dan broke the silence with words that Phil had longed to hear. 

“I’m sorry,” Dan said. “I’ve been unfair.”

Phil was silent for a moment. 

“I’m sorry too,” Phil said.

They both fell asleep, Phil listening to Dan’s breath slow and deepen before he himself drifted off. 

 

======

The next morning the snow had stopped completely but Phil going to school was still out of the question. The snow was thick but even thicker around the house where it had piled up from the wind. The door had snow stacked up completely against it. After breakfast Dan pulled the door open, breaking through the iced-over hinges and swung the door into the homestead. Where the door used to be there was a sheet of solid white, the frozen snow. 

They would have to get it all out of the way, they needed to get new wood and to tend to the animals in the barn.

It proved easier than Phil originally expected, the snow near the top of the door only about a foot thick. They broke through it after about 15 minutes, and from there on clearing the snow was easier. Still, the work took most of the day and by the end of it, Phil was frozen half to death. Once they had been able to get out of the house they sent the girls to go take care of the animals and some of the chores, they hard labor of clearing left to Dan and Phil. The two didn’t talk much at all, their work didn’t require much communication.  
=========================

Winter was a blessing and a curse. It meant that Dan and Phil were together and inside whenever Phil wasn’t teaching. But, it also meant that Dan’s family joined them. They were confined to one room, to the lower level of the house near the fire. 

Sometimes, they would have a moment to themselves. Dan kissed him when they went out to collect wood. It was almost always Grace’s job to do, but the two had started volunteering to do it just to have a moment alone. Yet, that wasn’t a real solution, since it was almost always so cold that they could only spend a few extra seconds outside alone. Besides, even if it was warm enough to stay, they wouldn’t be able to, because there was really only a set amount of time that going to get wood took, and only an extended amount of time before it became suspicious. It went without saying that whatever was going on between them wasn’t something that they were going to tell the rest of the family. Of course, they had noticed that they had been far more friendly toward each other, but they weren’t the wiser of anything more. Nothing of what had really developed between them. 

So it was only moments such as this, with Phil pushed up against the wall of the house next to the woodstock with their lips pressed against each other and Dan’s hand against his hip.The wind was howling, both of them shaking with the cold, but just desperate enough to be together. Eventually, they broke apart, their frozen noses pressing against each other for a moment before they got back to the work of gathering as much would they could into their arms and bring them inside. 

Still, the favorable thing about winter was that it gave them a viable excuse to sleep in the same bed. At least, a non-incriminating explanation if they got caught. They were two young men and they weren’t siblings, it would always be a bit strange for anyone who saw them, but that was why Dan got out of Phil’s bed every day before anyone else woke up. Making sure they were careful helped ebb away at the apprehension surrounding the possibility of being found out. Though they could be close together in their bedroom, they couldn’t talk. Any conversation could be heard in the next room over, even hushed voices rung loud and clear in the girls' room. So, they would just ritualistically crawl into Phil’s bed together, silently intertwining, fighting off the biting cold. Dan was stronger, larger, Phil liked being in his arms. It was the most comforting thing he had ever felt. He didn’t ever think that being held was something his future would hold. A wife wouldn’t hold him like Dan did, make him feel as safe. Dan’s labor-toned arms wrapped around Phil, Phil’s face pressed firmly into his chest. Phil always wanted to remain there forever, to forget the outside world and just feel so warm, even with the wind whistling outside. Dan had cold toes, cold fingers, and a cold face, but his stomach and his chest, everything around his middle, was warm. 

 

They didn’t speak much about the times before that day in the schoolhouse, the time when they had hated each other with so much passion. The two simply enjoyed the way things had become.

Though, eventually, the two began to speak about those days. It had always been at the back of Phil’s mind, but he had been apprehensive to think or ask about it. It had all changed so quickly, that one day flipping everything on its head. Phil was so happy now, but it felt fragile. The last thing that Phil wanted was to put things back to how they were. 

It all started with a question from Phil. Quiet and in the dark late one night when the wind was whipping so hard Phil was confident that the din of nature would overpower anything that they spoke about. 

“Dan...you hated me so much. Why” Phil’s voice came out even smaller than he expected. 

“I didn’t know you,” Dan said after a few beats. Phil could feel Dan’s warm breath on his forehead. 

“But that doesn’t give you any reason to hate me,” Phil said, his voice small again. He looked up at Dan meekly, catching his eyes in the dark.

“I don’t like teachers,” Dan said. 

Phil raised his eyebrows incredulously, and Dan swallowed like he didn’t know quite how to continue. 

“What I said about not being able to read, that was the truth. I can’t. I mean, I can a little, everyone can a little. But I just...I don’t understand how everyone else does it so easily. The letters they just…they swim and they don’t make sense. And the teachers I had...school was hell,” Dan said quietly, gently stroking the short hairs near the back of Phil’s neck. 

“School shouldn’t be hell,” Phil said quietly, but Dan only replied with a wry laugh. 

“I know you don’t think that. I know that now,” Dan replied, leaning down to give Phil a small kiss. 

“But I don’t think my teachers thought the same,” Dan continued. “It’s easy to make an example of the boy with nothing going on in his brain. Make him stand holding books out in front of him until he collapses, beat him, scold him, all that,” Dan said, his voice growing quieter as he finished his sentence. Phil tightened his grip on Dan, kissing his chest. 

“That’s not what learning is. Dan, anything you want to learn, I can teach you, no punishments.” Phil said quietly.

Dan didn’t reply, but he wrapped his arms firmly around Phil, letting out a long breath and when Phil looked up at his face, he was smiling. 

Their life gained a steady rhythm, a beat that they lived by. Phil was happy, and Dan was by his side.   
===================================

Epilogue:

If there were two things it seemed to Phil unlikely that Daniel would ever love, they were Phil and poetry. But now, with Dan’s head lain in his lap and a book of poetry clutched in Phil’s hand while he read aloud, there was nothing in the world sweeter.

The sand at the edge of the creek was cold. It was the edge of winter and spring, the cold still digging its heels into the mud as it was dragged away by the spring and summer, but the sun shining through the gaps in the trees above them made the day warmer than those past. It was a rare moment that the two had alone, Dan with his head in Phil’s lap as Phil sat above him, running his fingers through his soft curls.

They barely ever got moments alone like this, confined to the house for the last few weeks together and always occupied with chores or kids or were just dead asleep. A few nights a week, when it had been cold enough to excuse it in the morning without suspicion being drawn, they would crawl into each other’s beds and lay there together. But most of the time it was just looks shared over the dinner table, small touches as they worked. It was rare to have such a luxury as a few hours alone like this. Ma Marie had taken the kids to Church. The two men would usually go along, but they had some work to do that day that needed to get done before nightfall. They had gotten done quickly and then had gone down to the river since the family wouldn’t be home for a while now. They had gone down the small path to the creek, and now there they lay. Phil with a book of poems poised in his hands and Dan with a wreath of freshly bloomed crocuses being worked in his hands. Phil had pointed them out when he spotted them peeping through the snow on the way here. The signal of the cusp of spring. Dan had picked them offering them to Phil but Phil had only laughed, reaching forward to fold them back into Dan’s hand and saying “no, yours.” The spring brought warmth, light, the future of the year. Every year until now it had been what Phil had looked forward to most in the world. but this year it came with the price of a heavy mind as they both thought about what the year held for them. Not just each of them individually, but for the two of them together. For they were both certain now that they loved each other, but in only a few short days the school year would be over. Phil would return home miles away. They weren’t heterosexual, this was not a courtship with an end goal of holy matrimony, of children and family and prosperity and a farm of their own. While neither of them even thought to question if their relationship was worth it, it was hard for them to dream when their relationship so blatantly had a date that it would spoil. Phil was the first to bring up the point. They had sat in comfortable silence until Dan turned his head to look back at Phil, the question lingering on his tongue for a moment as the two locked eyes.

“Dan…what are we going to do? When I leave, I mean. I can’t come visit you. At least now often. I can write to you, of course. But there are days between us. Can we really live like that?” Phil asked quietly.

Dan took a second, shaking his head and watching Phil’s face. He gave him a wry smile as he took Phil’s hand, bringing it to his lips as he heaved a sigh. “I don’t know,” he said. “I…what if you come back next year? What if you stayed with us all the school years from now…from now until forever,” he said, his eyes so full of hope that Phil wanted to laugh. He knew Dan was saying it in jest, being childish and naïve in his answer on purpose. Neither of them wanted to face what was to come. It was too horrible a concept.

Phil gave a small laugh and shook his head, letting himself lean back for a second, looking up at the trees and the sunshine. “But Dan, I’m serious. We don’t have much time left at all. We need to figure this out,”

Dan groaned, turning so that this chest was pressed into Phil’s chest, closing his eyes as he said back “Do we have to?”

Phil didn’t respond, just continued to play with the brown locks between his fingers. Dan didn’t have to get an answer to know that they did have to. It was time. They need to plan. If this was going to work, it would have to be on more than a wing and a prayer, even if what they had not coming to an end was the exact last thing they wanted infecting their serenity by the creek.

“I don’t know. I know that I love you as I’ve never loved anyone else. Like I’ve never loved a woman. I love my family, and I love our land. I don’t think I could ever leave them, but I'm not exactly sure what they would ever except this part of me. And it’s a part of me I’m not sure will ever change. It’s something forever, like the seasons,” Dan said quietly.

Phil let out a small chuckle, leaning down to kiss the boy below him. “All my poetry has really been getting to you, hasn’t it,” Phil said, joking with Dan even though he appreciated every single thing the other man had just professed. Phil paused, letting the sounds of the stream fill his ears again, but Dan’s words still occupied his mind. “I feel the same way,” Phil confessed “Is it irrational that I think I would go anywhere for you. If you said run to the hills I’d ask what you think I should pack,” Phil said.

“We can’t run to the hills, you wouldn’t be able to survive without new books,” Dan said teasingly.

“No, you can tell me stories every day and I’ll be just fine,” Phil said with a small laugh  
“We can make our own stories,” Dan said, his voice unwaveringly optimistic. 

Phil nodded, smiling and tilting his head to look into Dan’s eyes. 

 

“I know that there’s so much in our way. Everything goes, everything runs out of time. So whatever we’ll have, it’ll be enough,” Phil said. 

Dan leaned forward to gently kiss Phil. “You’re enough.”


End file.
